What is a Blogger?

What’s a blogger? What’s a writer?
I’m not sure there’s a difference. After all, I run this blog, but most of you say that I’m a writer. People do pay me to write, so I guess I am a writer, in a way. However, I blog daily and write professionally something more like weekly, so one could easily say I’m more blogger than writer.
Perhaps this seems an existential exercise, but there appears to be a serious chasm between people that call themselves “writers” and people that call themselves “bloggers,” and it’s really silly.

What brings this on? I know I’m late, but I was just made aware of a “blogwar”–really, wtf?–involving fairly well-known writer kris ex and “bloggers” Hashim Warren and Byron Crawford (those last two are on the blogroll). I put “blogger” in quotation mark because that feels like a limited term. Both Hashim and Bol are good writers–they joined me on the illustrious izrael list of young writers to watch–both capable of sharp insight. I would personally like to see Bol show a bit more of that insight, but when one considers that he gets as much traffic in ten minutes than I do in a day, it’s impossible for me to knock what he’s doing.
My point, though, is that he’s a writer. In fact, I think that we’re all writers in a way. I was just reading an essay in Ralph’s Why Black People Tend to Shout, and Ralph said in there that writers are born, not made. Sure, anyone can be made aware of the technical parameters that a writer should follow, but the ability to move someone with words is innate. “Writers” have typically taken more time to work on the craft and, therefore, have a few more technical tools at their discretion.
That’s all window dressing, though. Having that window dressing is important for being a professional writer, but it’s not enough to make someone a writer.
I guess I’m saying that not being a professional writer does not preclude one from being a “writer.” I started writing professionally during a terrible summer, but I didn’t become some different person when I finally starting putting the keyboard to work for me. I was the same cat. If I was a “writer” after getting some checks, then I was also a writer when I was losing my soul as a chemistry major, and God knows I remained a writer while that Ph.D program was sapping my soul.
So why do I mention this? At the risk of rehashing–and re-igniting some “beef”–kris ex took exception to a quasi-review that Hashim did of the autobiography 50 Cent wrote with kris. What he wrote was pretty funny, and it wasn’t too much different from what I blogged about that same book over on the bidness thang.
Seemed pretty benign, right? Tell that to kris, who (link removed per legitimate request) proceeded to call Hashim every variety of homosexual there is, but then came with a strange closing considering how silly and homophobic the entirety of his 1,500 word diatribe was. ‘Twas a bunch of stuff that one would never say without his hands protecting his face plate, and it’s bad news to do that stuff on the ‘Net. I doubt kris knows what Bol or Hashim looks like. They know what kris looks like. Depending on how they role, kris coulda caught a bad one. There are great stories about cats gettin’ stomped out by folks they offend on the Internet.
And they’re real, jack. Trust me.
kris stepped across a line. While we’re all writers, we’re not all professionals, and this is something a professional wouldn’t involve himself with. C’mon dude…don’t body yaself? This can’t be serious. Body…you mean like getting killed? Over twenty-four words, all of which I could comfortably say in front of my mother? Man…what ever happened to just leaving a comment? That’s what the damn field is for.
But let’s not get too wrapped in that. kris chose the route he chose, and he, Bol, and Hashim have had to deal with the strange consequences of those words (lots of phone calls, a threat here and there…you know, the basics). The real concern I have is that there really appears to be divide between “writers” and “bloggers,” and it makes no sense to me. We’re all just saying what the fuck we feel. That’s it. The deeper I get into this media game and the more I meet people I’ve always looked up to, I realize that they–and I–do the same thing that people do in the barber shop. We try to make points, we try to get reactions, and we try to be, on some level, right. But we don’t do this with some magical set of tools or ideologies. We do this with our influences, our educations, our passions, our shortcomings, and our intellects, all of which are molded by our experiences.
We’re all the same in this.
But there are “bloggers” who harbor some hostility toward “writers” because they don’t appreciate the “writers'” perspectives, and I’m sure there’s a strong handful of bloggers that wish they were writing professionally. At the same time, writers have to realize, at some point, that a lot of these bloggers get traffic that trumps the circulation of more major magazines. Really, is kris ex more well-known at this point than Byron Crawford? I’ve seen Crawford’s numbers. At last check, he’s got one of the top 60,000 sites on the net in terms of traffic.
That’s reach, baby.
And perhaps there are writers who are bothered by that. Lots of folks get into this business for that reach and to be come famous. It should be noted that anyone that writes for fame is dumb as a sack of hammers. Better learn to rap, dude. All the same, some people are turned on by the prospect of being known, and it must suck to those people to see that after paying dues, fetching coffee, writing for shitty magazines, interviewing shitty rappers and, in some cases, enduring nauseating sexual harassment, there are cats that went to Blogspot and started their own shit and got audiences that many folks dream of.
And they didn’t even get into it for money.
Maybe that’s where this division between writers and bloggers began, but it’s silly. The best part about the Internet is the way it provides access to a world of opinions and takes away the unnecessary weight “prestige” carries. We’re all just saying what we think and feel. Some of us are better at it than others, but we’re really all the same in that respect. The cat that can’t respect the blogger is the cat that can’t respect wisdom from the street corner, the cat that doesn’t realize how useless it is to consider the credentials of the source instead of the credibility.
Personally, I thought this blogwar was funny, but it really did disturb me, and I ain’t even one of those “cry at after-school specials” sorts of cats. I’m a professional writer that loves to blog and read blogs, and I’m always looking for new things to read. My frustration is with the belief many writers have about those that don’t write, which is similar to the way engineers and scientists feel about thoses that don’t perform their trades. They have the general belief that people do not go into said realms professionally because of some shortcoming in their skill sets, never considering that some people just might not feel like doing that shit (for example, I gave away a $80k scholarship from the Navy to do chemistry because I just ain’t feel like it).
When kris decided to use this as a writer’s battle or something, it set my antenna off for what really might be going on here. Maybe I’m reaching, but there really appears to be a divide going on. To some, being a writer isn’t as cool because anyone can go to Blogspot and set their shit up. It’s less exclusive, and everyone knows that exclusivity’s best property is itself.
So what, man? Just write and roll from there. It’s a professional duty, but it’s also what we should all be doing. Just write. This ain’t the business for sensitivity, and it surely ain’t the business for beefing. Most writers ain’t equipped for fighting, meaning you really shouldn’t mess with ’em. Why fight when you can squeeze, right?
And now, this is done. Forgive me getting unnecessarily philosophical about this, but it just felt like it needed to be said.